


I, Magus

by Reishiin



Category: Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3589731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/Reishiin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Let me help</i>—the words die at the back of Dalamar’s throat. Even if the <i>Shalafi</i> would allow him, what could he possibly do?</p><p>(Raistlin dreams.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I, Magus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whathecheeze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whathecheeze/gifts).



> It’s been a while since I read the novels, so apologies for any canon inconsistencies. I hope you like it!

 

The Master of the Tower dreams tonight, and the spectres murmur among themselves in fearful whispers as they gather and flood inward from the outer reaches of the underbrush. As the last of them crosses the threshold into the Tower’s entrance hall, Dalamar pulls the heavy ironwrought doors closed against the howling storm outside.

Dalamar herds the spectres downward through the Tower’s twisting stairwells into the basement chamber that holds the Pool of Seeing. The wisps of black smoke whisper among themselves as they approach the Live Ones with a wary trepidation, and Dalamar watches the interaction closely: the two species of magical creature are natural enemies, and more than once he has returned in the morning to more blood muddying the pool than he had been able to explain.

Tonight, at least, the survival instinct appears to triumph hostility.

Satisfied, Dalamar steps out of the room and seals the doors behind him with an incantation. He has saved many of their not-quite lives this night—not out of kindness or even pity, but merely because he remembers what it is like to walk the earth with nothing to his name but the dark god’s favour.

There are two hundred and fifty-three stone steps that separate this room from the _Shalafi_ ’s quarters. Without the spectral voices whispering through the air, the stairwells of the Tower of High Sorcery are quiet enough that even his light step is loud enough to echo.

On the _Shalafi’_ s threshold, Dalamar lays the tips of his fingers against the cool steel of the door and summons the spell that requests permission to enter. There is no response, just as there never has been, even though he can feel all through the stone and heavy steel the pulse of magic that beats through the Tower to the time of the _Shalafi_ ’s breathing.

The _Shalafi_ dreams tonight and in his dreams he summons the storms, the wind and the lightning that will tear the leaves of trees from the branches and the feathers and fur of animals from their bones. The Tower is safe from harm, bolstered from harm by structural reinforcements and the _Shalafi_ ’s own wards, but if there are still living or undead things that yet linger in the Grove, they will not survive the night.

Around him the Tower shudders, once, and Dalamar’s breath catches. _Shalafi, please_ —

It is useless.

Dalamar turns and tilts his head back to rest against the cold metal of the door, eyes open, and the many layers of warding spells spark cautiously at the contact. A long time ago, Dalamar had realised with a dissonant serenity that as long as the _Shalafi_ lives, the Tower will remain standing, and as long as the Tower remains standing, the magical artefacts and secrets within will be protected. Therefore, his magical abilities will not be required.

(Therefore, the _Shalafi_ will have no need of him.)

 

* * *

 

The next day when the archmage arrives at the study with a cup of tea in hand, Dalamar notices that the slim wrinkled fingers wrapped around the mug of steaming liquid are trembling, just a little.

He pretends he does not see. He pretends he does not know. He tries to act as though everything is normal and swallows down again the bitter truth he has tried and failed to deny, even though he knows that his mind and heart must be laid out bloody and bare beneath the archmage’s terrible eyes.

The archmage informs him impassively that the wards around Shoikan Grove need repairing and he bows his head in assent. _L_ _et me help_ —the words die at the back of Dalamar’s throat. Even if the _Shalafi_ would allow him, what could he possibly do?

The Shoikan Grove is populated with the undead spirits of those who had not wished to die, and now Dalamar calls them to him— the spirits to whom he had given shelter, so that he may claim the price with which they will pay for their lives. He draws on their magic, as well as his own, and casts wide the spell of reparation. He restores the roots that snake deep into the ground where the corpses lie. He restores the branches that catch and tangle in the hair of unwary wanderers. He restores the magic that traps travellers on the path with no exit.

The wind is cold as the touch of Soth’s servants around his throat. In the distance, over the gates, the black robes of a long-dead mage snag and wave.

 

* * *

 

Dalamar has met Caramon Majere once before, although the man will not remember him. Even though he had not set out expecting much, with only the intention of meeting the man who had been closest to the _Shalafi_ , the sight of the drunkard slumped against the countertop had flooded him with cold contempt. Here is the one person in the world who could have done anything at all for the one named Raistlin Majere, and yet here he is, too far away to care.

His wife is a human woman who is run to the end of her rope with despair, and yet she clings to the fool’s hope that something will change—that her presence can change something. It is useless, and yet Dalamar can sympathise.

 

* * *

 

Kitiara uth Matar roots him out and wrings him for information about the _Shalafi_ ’s plans, and he tells her almost willingly. She inspires mortal fear in much the same way the archmage does, except with more force and less restraint.

The resemblance is subtle, but there. In her sharp and expressive face Dalamar can search for the young man he sees only in the memory of others, skin and eyes not yet woven through with gold, sharp intelligence hidden behind a sickly and defective frame.

That man suffers alone, now. He has not seen it happen, but he has seen its effects.

Dalamar cannot say for sure what makes him move forward to kiss her then. Kitiara responds as only she knows how to; surges up to meet his ardour with open eyes and a terrible, knowing smile. As his lips form the syllables of her name over the surface of her skin, he thinks of a day when the Master of the Tower is no longer _Shalafi_  to him but _Raistlin_ , and all that entailed.

The next morning he wakes to the cold empty room and the memory of Kitiara’s mocking laughter, and carefully blanks the encounter out of his mind.

 

* * *

 

Just once, Raistlin let him.

In that place where everything had gone terribly, horribly wrong. The archmage whispering a spell of healing urgently across his skin, knitting together torn flesh and fractured bone not out of love or sentiment but because he needed Dalamar’s magic to bolster his own if they were to make it back to the Tower alive.

The archmage’s voice in his mind, _you do it, apprentice_ , and Dalamar realises with a sudden chill that the archmage is too weak even to vocalise the command. All at once, the archmage’s presence is no longer brimming with magical fire but instead dead weight against his side.

Dalamar does not know which way Krynn is or even which of the thirteen astral planes Raistlin had brought them to; can do nothing but cast _l_ _ethodor ithikitalkus maldifidii locitiumi_ over and over and trust the thing in his soul that would always, always point him true in the direction of Ansalon, and Palanthas, and the Tower of High Sorcery where the _Shalafi_ reigns.

He focuses on the dull pain that will remain atop his heart for as long as he lives; the ghost of Raistlin’s fingers that reach through skin and flesh to settle atop bone. On so many occasions, the archmage leaning close to deliver some cutting slight against his technique, while Dalamar can barely draw breath for the suffocating scent of roses and decay. The day Dalamar had arrived in Palanthas and made his way through the Shoikan Grove to reach the Tower; kneeling before the archmage, the pressure of the _Shalafi_ ’s fingers pale against his own dark hair as he angled his face to catch the light.

That day Dalamar had seen his own death in the archmage’s eyes and the knowledge had flooded all through him like a truth he can hardly believe has ever not been real: this human man Majere, Master of the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas, _my Shalafi…_

Even through the blood that fills his nose and mouth and makes it difficult to breathe, Dalamar laughs. _I thought you said, that “if such an event occurred”, you would save yourself but not me?_

 

...

 

The steady trickle of blood into his eyes makes it difficult to see, but Dalamar registers the magical signature of the Live One that prods anxiously at his side. Success, then, Dalamar thinks, the notion of _home_ materialising only briefly in his mind before he drives it away.

If only Par-Salian and the rest of the Conclave could see him now. It occurs to Dalamar that he could kill Raistlin, now and here. Here, alone in the entire world, crouched in the basement of a Tower of High Sorcery. It could be so easy. He could save Krynn, possibly the entire universe, from certain doom. Finish the job he had been sent here to do.

At his side, the archmage shifts in pain under his hands.

Dalamar remembers a day when the hurricanes outside of the tower had ripped the trees from the earth and howled with abject pain, remembers throwing every breaking spell he knows against the door fortified by wards that will not yield with only one thought in his mind: _Shalafi, please—_

_Please let me—_

Remembers catching an image of fire and blood and light and rain before the shielding spell blasts him clear of the door, through the hall and down the first flight of stone stairs.

Is this what Caramon Majere saw on all those long and lonely nights?

Dalamar could kill the renegade archmage, but he does not try. Instead, he uses the last of his magic to draw the threads of time together, just in this room, just for a second. Crystallizes this moment and everything it entailed into a single, fire-blue memory sphere.

He tucks it beneath his robes, over his heart, where the weeping marks of Raistlin’s fingers still burn into his skin. Then the magic gives out, and he lets unconsciousness take him.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes, he finds himself alone in his quarters, blood still congealing in the sheets. The Tower is silent. He thinks he might have seen a wisp of black smoke and a Live One conversing in a corner, but as soon as he turns to look, the image vanishes.

After he cleans the blood from his hair he finds the archmage in the study, carefully reconstructing the spells that defend the collection of interdimensional portals. Business as usual, then. There are no words of gratitude or even acknowledgement from the archmage, and the only reminder Dalamar has that the previous day’s events had happened at all is the cold relief that settles in his chest at the knowledge that the _Shalafi_ is still alive.

Belatedly, he also feels a somewhat sharper relief that he himself is still alive, after what had transpired.

( _The day you find something more important to you than the magic,_ his once-mentor had warned, _is the day you lose the magic altogether._ But not yet. Not today.)

Dalamar clasps, through the heavy fabric of his robes, the ghost of Raistlin’s fingers over his heart. The pain will always be with him, a stark reminder of the betrayal. Yet it is not merely a punishment but the archmage’s claim—the simple knowledge that Dalamar belongs to him, body, mind and soul, and Raistlin Majere does not give up what is his without a fight.

It passes between them without need for words, and although nothing has changed, Dalamar can find it within himself to smile.


End file.
